Verdicts in big Vatican corruption trial due on Saturday

VATICAN CITY: Defence lawyers at the Vatican's big corruption trial, in which one of the 10 defendants is a cardinal, completed their summing up on Tuesday and the court president announced that the verdicts would be announced on Saturday.

The trial, which began in July 2021 and has sat for 85 sessions, revolves mostly around the complicated purchase of a luxury building in London by the Secretariat of State, the Vatican's key administrative and diplomatic department.

The Vatican sold the building last year, taking an estimated loss of about 140 million euros.

All of the defendants have denied wrongdoing. Chief among them is Cardinal Angelo Becciu, 75, who was number two at the secretariat at the time of the purchase and is the highest ranking Vatican official ever to face a trial.

He is accused of embezzlement, abuse of office and inducing a person to give false testimony.

The others on trial, which was heard by a panel of three judges, include several Vatican employees and two outside Italian brokers who the Vatican has accused of extortion.

At his summing up on Monday, prosecutor Alessandro Diddi repeated his request for guilty verdicts for all of the defendants, which he first made in July, when he asked for a jail sentence of seven years and three months for Becciu.

Diddi asked for a sentence of more than 11 years for one of the brokers, Raffaele Mincione, and more than nine years for the other, Gianluigi Torzi.

The pope fired Becciu from another senior clerical post in 2020 for alleged nepotism. That accusation has often surfaced at the trial and Becciu denied that as well.